Seeds and fibers

Today is the two-month anniversary* of this blog’s first post, so I had the idea, number-nurturer that I am, of looking back to see what I’d photographed on August 4 during the last two years and posting a picture from each of those dates. The only problem with that idea is that when I checked my archives I discovered that I hadn’t taken a single nature photograph on August 4 in 2010 or 2009. Undeterred, I went back a year further and found that on August 4, 2008, I’d gone to the prairie in northeast Austin and had photographed—hardly a surprise to recent readers of this column—some Clematis drummondii in its “old man’s beard” stage. The picture from this year that I posted on July 23 also showed approximately the same phase, but things weren’t as far along as in the image above from three years ago. In this advanced view, the seeds had begun coming undone from both of the cores visible in the picture, one at the left and one in the center. As a reminder of scale, everything in this image occupies perhaps a little more than one cubic inch. Notice that the seeds shown here were browner than in this year’s view, and the feathery strands attached to them are more copper-colored than silvery white. It doesn’t take much imagination to see a resemblance between these long-tailed seeds from the plant kingdom and spermatozoa from the animal kingdom, which though much tinier serve the same purpose.

This is fascinating. I loved the comparison with the greener one. Very interesting and good of you to link the two with Lemony’s. Now, I understand her own fascination with those bushes. I remember her post about lurking near the neighbor’s clematis!

One of the things I like to do is show a given species in different stages. Apart from that, this local species is one of my favorite to photograph because it offers so much to a nature photographer—or at least to this nature photogrpher. Two other Clematis species with very different flowers grow in central Texas, one of which I photographed a couple of times recently and will eventually show a picture of.

I often find resonances with what other people present in their posts, so pointing out those connections seems like a natural—and also teacherly—thing to do.

You are very generous to teach others. Lots of photographers are so secretive about their work. The funny thing is that with all of your instruction, I won’t get any better because I don’t listen. I also have a familial tremor in my right hand. Lemony talked me into taking the flash off and shooting in aperture priority. Yes, that’s the stage I am. :-) I am going to post my walk with Lemony photographs tomorrow so she can see what I did. This is too much fun for an old lady!